Theatre in Review: Russian Troll Farm (Vineyard Theatre)

	Haskell King, John Lavelle, Renata Friedman, Hadi Tabbal. Photo. Carol Rosegg

In Russian Troll Farm, Christine Lahti is the kind of boss guaranteed to make any HR manager spontaneously combust. Whippet-thin in a series of tailored pantsuits, her cascading hair like bird wings at rest, she rules her little world with an iron will, regarding her inferiors with an expression that has all the warmth and charm of a hatchet. An interview with a prospective new hire is like a police grilling. (This is not inappropriate, since she plays Ljuba, manager of the social media department in a St. Petersburg-based disinformation factory.) "If I had my way, I'd send this entire unit to a gulag," she snarls following a disappointing staff performance. A one-on-one employee review leaves the poor soul reduced to a pulp.

And yet, in a rare moment of reflection, Ljuba rivets us with the story of her life -- an account, unusually delivered in the second person -- that eerily parallels the changes that have whipsawed Russia in recent decades. Her life has been one long act of psychological origami: Losing her parents at a very young age -- they were deemed traitors to the Soviet Union, so the hell with them, she feels -- she recounts being raised by an unforgiving aunt. Following an unwanted pregnancy, she is separated from her daughter and is sent to university where she becomes a KGB informant, betraying the young lesbian students to whom she is attracted. She keeps up this odious practice even while conducting a long-term affair with the wife of a government official. The fall of the USSR is, for her, a kind of death, and she struggles to adapt -- but she does, using the skills she developed under the old regime: "You join a small elite of political technologists who get together and actually invent the dramaturgiya, or political narrative, of Putin's campaigns," she says. "Russia vs Muslims? Russia vs Ukraine? Russia vs Gays? That's a good one." But, even as she might concede, this self-described "ghost from a glorious future that never came" has nothing left inside. The monologue is an extraordinary set piece by playwright Sarah Gancher, and Lahti conducts a probing tour of Ljuba's soul, or what's left of it.

Ljuba's employees -- a prize collection of misfits, sad sacks, and double-crossers -- are tasked with sowing division in American society. (It is 2016 and electing Donald Trump president is the highly prized goal.) Adopting various identities and handles on Facebook and Twitter, they issue baseless, ad hominem attacks from all ideological positions, demonizing everyone, left, right, and center, and spreading bizarre rumors guaranteed to inflame public indignation. (Amazingly, many of the toxic posts featured in the play have been taken by the playwright from actual social media feeds.) They are also pretty good at sowing divisions among themselves. Masha, an ex-journalist disgusted with her former career, teams up with Nikolai, a would-be screenwriter, to create lurid narratives, for example, spinning a comment about the tunnels under Disneyland into a fantasy about an underground pedophile ring run by the Clintons (#Killary); the rumor takes off, with others adding details about the passengers on United Flight 93. Unfortunately, the buzz earned for peddling such nonsense is a turn-on for Masha, who has a record of sleeping with her male managers, and the married Nikolai. Their unwise entanglement leaves them open to scandal and prosecution.

Then there are Ljuba's problem children. The hopelessly nerdy Egor is a star performer, racking up hundreds of engagements in pursuit of the microwave oven offered in an office competition, but he resists orders to stop adopting a Black identity. ("I have an audience I'm responsible to. I'm part of a community," he says, a remark that leaves Ljuba dumbfounded.) Steve, a feral creature of astounding rudeness and vulgarity, insists, "Traditional cultures all over the world are under attack by liberals, democrats, capitalists -- we must fight back, or Russian culture will be lost forever." But his zealotry causes him to chafe under Ljuba's orders, which are entirely focused on producing high numbers in certain key demographics. Before long, Steve and Egor, who can't stand each other, team up to destroy Ljuba, but first they have to take out Masha and Nikolai.

Russian Troll Farm, which traffics in a kind of wry humor that often sounds better on the page, suffers from several problems, not the least being that its internecine office intrigues quickly become tedious, largely because the characters are so wanly realized. Masha is little more than a list of predictable bad choices and Nikolai is the kind of weakling one can spot a mile off; their affair is distinctly uncompelling. Egor, who "wants to pass through to the other side of the screen and dissolve into an explosion of crystalline code, and I will be everywhere and nowhere and obviously...immortal," is a more original creation but his character is, by definition, unidimensional. Steve, who obsesses over his digestive problems and is alarmingly given to disrobing -- the production features a dropped-pants gag, I kid you not -- is more irritating than provocative. Addressing us, he grouses, "The Enlightenment was the event in human history," which "led to mass migration, war, environment devastation...And I'm supposed to believe the point of all that was just some fucking faggots can put weddings on their cocks." Smiling at us, he adds, "Does that offend you? Are you getting mad?" Well, bored is more like it.

There's a deeper problem with Russian Troll Farm, which was first performed online in October 2020. Back then, its warnings about foreign nationals pouring intellectual nuclear waste into the national discourse were fresh and alarming. Four years later, the subject having been covered by every news outlet in every media, Gancher has little to add to the indictment. (In some ways, the action feels strangely passé; the rise of AI and deepfakes make Ljuba and her crew look like pikers.) The play isn't fake news, but it is old news.

Interestingly, in 2020, Ljuba's monologue seemed intrusive, even when performed by the great Mia Katigbak. Here, it is the main event, and the rest of Russian Troll Farm is, in comparison, a little bit dull, even with a trim running time of one hundred minutes. This is despite a solid cast: Renata Friedman, neurotically self-obsessed and dreaming of escape to London as Masha; Hadi Tabbal as Nikolai, disingenuously insisting that the group's nefarious activities "proves the power of imagination;" Haskell King as Egor, barely looking away from his screen to admit he has no friends in real life; and John Lavelle, who gives Steve a certain Jack Black energy, especially when taking down the likes of Nikolai as "this human latte, this performative bookstore tote bag, this stock photo of a stay-at-home dad who just happened to fuck the right oligarch's daughter." (Clearly, Gancher is better at arias than trenchant dramatic action.)

Darko Tresnjak's production can't be faulted for its slickness and pacing. Alexander Dodge's set carves a grimly utilitarian office out of a piece of brutalist architecture, providing a solid surface for Jared Mezzocchi's cascade of images that include hundreds of social media posts and footage of the 2016 GOP convention and presidential debates. Marcus Doshi's lighting makes strong use of side positions to infuse the stage in various moody color washes. The sound design by Darron L West and Beth Lake, effectively blends Swan Lake, the Chaka Khan - Rufus hit "Tell Me Something Good," and EDM with more prosaic touches such as flushing toilets. Linda Cho's costumes, aided by Tom Watson's wig designs, give each character a strong individual profile; she also provides a disconcerting eleventh-hour change of clothes for Steve, which hints at treachery to come.

The activities depicted in Russian Troll Farm certainly remain a clear and present danger as we embark on this most unsettling of election cycles. (Gancher does have something interesting to say about the buzz that her characters, frustrated in other parts of their lives, get from achieving their objectives.) But its indignation has seemingly arrived too late; this boat sailed long ago, and it is doubtful that a single person in the Vineyard audience doesn't know it. Still, Lahti's Ljuba is a skin-crawling example of a soul sold, repeatedly, for the sake of survival and personal advancement. I wonder what many of our political leaders would make of her, or if they would recognize the mirror that she holds up to them. --David Barbour